


To Rebuild Uruk

by Megkips



Category: Fate/stay night (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen, Gilgamesh gets bored plans out cities, Gotta do something in those ten years with Kirei, Rin is not impressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megkips/pseuds/Megkips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every so often, when the priest is away in only his ridiculous God knows where for a week or two, Gilgamesh finds himself building new cities.</p><p>They’re all on paper, of course, he can’t rebuild the world as it ought to be yet, but he can plan how they ought to look.  The Grail lets him convert familiar cubits to modern meters with ease, and armed with a single t-square and a calculator, he puts pencil to paper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Rebuild Uruk

Every so often, when the priest is away in only his ridiculous God knows where for a week or two, Gilgamesh finds himself building new cities.

They’re all on paper, of course, he can’t rebuild the world as it ought to be yet, but he can plan how they ought to look. The Grail lets him convert familiar cubits to modern meters with ease, and armed with a single t-square and a calculator, he puts pencil to paper. He plans out new grids with attention to modern plumbing - one of the precious few things he will confess the modern world has made that pleases him, adds in irrigation channels for towns that he knows will be used for farming, considers roads for transportation and if he will permit cars to remain.

Most importantly, Gilgamesh plans out the new buildings that will grace each city. He includes no ziggurats - there is no need for the gods to have a place to dwell on Earth any more - and so the lavishness that they ought to have is poured into everything else. Labyrinthian indoor markets, protected from the elements with elaborate entrances at every cardinal direction, apartment buildings that dare to rise into the air with windows that let sunlight flood in, parks to be filled with great monuments, to say nothing of individual homes built no longer with mud brick but with stronger stones, finely crafted after being quarried from the other side of the world, and walls. Glorious walls, painted the colour of lapis lazuli, with great gates decorated with great lamassus to ward off all that might threaten those within the city they protect and elaborate iron in perfect spikes to impale all those that might try and sneak through closed gates.

They’re beautiful, his cities. Gilgamesh smiles when he finishes each drawing, knowing that each new design can only improve the miserable world around him. He’ll have it no other way

***

Father Kirei Kotomine’s replacement, Father Taro Hirotada, finds a closet full of blueprints one day, cleaning out the documents of his predecessor. The writing on them is unfamiliar - too precise, too crisp to be Kotomine’s, and the contents far too strange. They’re wonderful buildings - designed to recreate something old and venerable - but his lips purse in a thin, unhappy line at them all the same because they have no business hiding in a storage closet in a church. Stranger still is the little signature in the upper right corner of each - made of triangles and lines and not much else. He frowns at the marks, unable to place them, and decides to ask the city’s caretaker if she might know anything about them.

He brings a few of the drawings to the Tohsaka household one day during the summer, when the land’s administrator is back from her schooling in London.

“These came to my attention the other day,” he says, once the routine of pleasantries is run through. “Hiding in a storage closet. I thought that you ought to see them--”

Rin unrolls the largest of all the drafts, staring down as a city that might be Fuyuki and might not be. She can name plenty of cities split by rivers. What she cannot name is an adjective for the city in front of her, designed on a grid and carefully sectioned off not only by what should be in which district but by affordability of housing, how much food would be required to keep the populace at a steady number, the best routes for transporting said food, and twenty other factors scribbled in a column on the left hand side. She rolls it up wordlessly and picks another drawing instead, and realizes the words she wants for the house staring up at her are, “Damn good. Near perfect, even.” Because they are. 

“These were in the church?” she asks, inspecting a draft meant for an apartment complex. 

“Yes. However, it certainly isn’t the previous priest’s work,” Father Hirotada says, careful not to use his predecessor's name around Rin. “I’ve never seen any of this handwriting before. Father Risei’s was also different. The only clue I have as to who might be responsible is the signature in the top right corner on all the drawings.”

Rin’s eyes glance upward. “What language--?”

“I have no idea. I was hoping you might.”

All colour drains from Rin’s face after a moment’s silence, and it looks as if she might throw the paper across the room. “That,” she says breathlessly, staring at the designs as if they might leap off the page and overtake her city at any moment, “is cuneiform. And I think,” she continues, shoving the papers away from her, “that the fate of these documents really doesn’t matter, and I’ll leave their future to your discretion. Was there anything else you needed to go over with me, or were scribbles the most pressing matter?”

“--There were other things, but they can wait,” the priest says, watching Rin roll up the papers while trying to minimize her contact with them as much as possible. “Would you like me to finish packing those up?”

“Please.”

Hirotada does so, and once the papers are tucked under his arms, Rin sees him out to his car and off the Tohsaka property. A look of relief crosses her face as he backs down and out of her driveway, carrying away the papers and whatever horror cuneiform holds in the back seat.

As the priest drives back to the church, he debates the best thing to do with the closet full of drafts. From the look on Rin’s face, it would be her preference to get rid of them all. There is a story that goes with the blueprints that he is not being told, and it is in the interest of the church to try and regain the Tohsaka’s trust. Destroying the reminders of whatever history the drafts carry with them would be one step forward. Of course, to damage someone’s hard - and admittedly beautiful - work seems a sin of sorts, and not one that Hirotada is comfortable committing. 

In the end, he places the drafts back with the others, closes the closet, and leaves them be. There may yet be a use for them, and a small part of the priest suspects that their destruction would come with a price. He’d rather not tempt anything that uses cuneiform to write its name.

**Author's Note:**

> The _Epic of Gilgamesh_ credits Gilgamesh with rebuilding (or building, depending on your translation) the walls of Uruk and rebuilding (or building) temples. In addition, [ziggurats](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurats) are presently thought to be the primary locations of worship. Given Gilgamesh's feelings towards the gods, it makes sense that he would include no such structure within his redesigned cities.
> 
> As always, thanks to [Penitence Road](http://archiveofourown.org/users/penitence_road) for the beta and to Mith for name help.


End file.
